← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
*SALES EMAIL SUMMIT* Melquea Smith– finding my first founding members
00:16:47
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Transcript7 lines
- [00:01]
A
What up? Liz Wilcox here, the host of Sales Email Summit. Before we get into this interview, I just want to let you know that this summit is sponsored by List Gadget. List Gadget.com is how you can turn every email into a growth machine. We've got embeddable polls, leaderboards, referral programs and more. And I know this sounds crazy, but you can do it in about 30 second startup time. Now right now we are offer getting $10 off the starter plan to make it just $9 a month. So if you're into adding email polls, reactions, subscriber leaderboards and more to your email newsletter, head on over to listgadget.com all right, let's get into this episode. Okay Malquia, let's get into this. What is the most interesting or most lucrative sales email that you have sent out in the last six to 12 months?
- [01:03]
B
Months? Alrighty, Liz hello. Hello. Hello. My name is Malkia Smith. I'm a children's book illustrator and I illustrate black and brown kids through clip art through my membership. My most interesting email that I've actually sent out is titled for your eyes only Eye emoji, Lip emoji, Eye emoji. And it's freaking hilarious. I love that subject line and it makes me laugh so much. I'll read the email out. It says oh my gosh. Dear reader, that set of emojis always makes me laugh. Oh man. Okay, I'm done now. Silliness aside, I wanted to hop in your inbox and share some works in progress. As you know, I'm building out a membership where I provide an illustration you can use each week. Some lovely people replied back to me and asked what I'm currently working on and I just had to share. I'm going to be working in collections. These are the sets of illustrations around a central theme. For my first set, I worked on kids reading. I have an illustration of a kid reading. The next logical set was kids writing. My current set is a real fun one. Kids with big old school supplies. Here's a few sketches of what I have so far. And then I have a few sketches of the the next collection that's going through it. Dear reader, I have so many ideas that I can't wait to sit down and illustrate, such as kids dancing, kids playing pretend, kids with pets, kids and professions. But like not your typical doctor, lawyer and etc. I have plans on illustrating careers like a marine biologist. Why? Because I know one. Cool, right? Of course, I'll be working on seasonal collections too. And eventually I'll be making collections that explore other concepts such as financial literacy, and even collections less grounded in realism, like fairies, dragons and more because why not? And I'm going to provide it through this membership. I'm so excited to build this membership with you, dear reader, and I want you to get in before I close close the doors to the beta membership this coming Monday. I want this to be something that will help you flourish and I'm so, so excited to get started on building this thing. If you're ready to join me, click the button below and let's get started. Because kids deserve to see themselves in the content we create. There's a call to action button that says sign me up. My signature says see you inside my name and I have an I have an image of myself that's just very exciting. And then of course I have a psych. Still have questions, hit reply, let me know what's on your mind and let's chat further to see if this works for you. So a little bit of the email stats. I sent this off to a total of 145 people. The open rate at the time was 47.6 and the click rate was 0.7%. I sent this email out on May 8, 2025 and this was before I even had a name for my membership and I just call it the Illustration membership. I don't even think I made money through this email, but what makes me so proud of it was the ability for me to show my authentic self through email. That was something that I just loved. I loved just having the subject line and fun fact for the organization that I worked at. I actually sent an email out that was different but with that same subject line. And one of my coworkers who's in digital marketing, he laughed his pants off. He was like, I cannot believe that you came up with this and it is absolutely hilarious. So this was something that is really, really fun for me and I was super excited to be able to share this versus something that like generated income. It was one part of a series of emails for my launch.
- [05:07]
A
Okay, that subject line is so funny and I totally know like the set of emojis you're talking about and I also laugh, laugh, laugh whenever I see them because it's so funny. The like the eyeball lip eyeball thing. It's so, so funny. So like you said you're not sure if you can contribute or attribute a single like sale to this email, but you said it was a series of emails in a launch. My question is, did you make any Founding member sales. And also, what was your biggest lesson from launching? I know you said, oh, I wrote this email and it just sounded like Melquia. I love that. So aside from that lesson, was there another one that you could teach us? Because I love this and I love featuring you for this summit in particular because you're just getting started with your email list. You're doing all the things, you're going through the motions. So what's your biggest takeaway? And did you make any sales from the entirety of the launch?
- [06:20]
B
Yeah, that email just. It does it for me, even for my super serious jobby job. It was definitely something that just uplifted the spirits of even our donors and everything. But that's not why we're here. So the overall launch, I actually received seven founding members at $5.99 a month. I actually, there's a little bit of a pride thing here, but I was like, I don't want to discount my art, I'm an artist, blah, blah, blah about. Insert comment about the value of art. But I needed to figure out a way to be able to offer something, something to entice people to be able to join and be my founding members. Because like you, I didn't have everything set in place. Like, sure, I took six months and let the initial idea of a membership kind of percolate in my mind. And I did a lot of research and I talked to a lot of fol. But it was definitely something where it was like I needed, I needed to, to. To make sure that this thing is viable. And the best way to know that it's viable is if somebody actually purchases. And I had seven founding members, 5.99amonth. About five of those members are still there, are still here with me. And the beauty of all of this is that it was. I wasn't ready. I was not ready. I didn't have a name for the membership. It was called the Illustration membership. I didn't have a really graphics so to say for it. I was building it. And so what I did was I talked to my members or getting people on board to build this with me. And I remember having an email where I said, listen, I actually don't have all the answers. I'm not the sage on the stage, as you always say. I'm the person that is using my skill set of illustration to be able to serve you and to serve the littles in your life that you impact. And so this, the good news was that what I offered, which is a inherent need that is this desperately Needed, which is clip art that centers black and brown kids. The good news of this venture is that my illustrations and actually solve a problem, which is really difficult for a difficult thing for an artist to figure out. It's really, really difficult for visual artists especially to figure out what does my. What problems does my art solve? You know, in thinking about my art in a different way as a product, but also as something that is intrinsically, I don't know, joyful, that gives that. That gives a little bit of healing and uplifting. But the beauty also is that because I had founding members, I was able to reach out to them and ask, do you have time to get on a call? And, you know, it was like 15. I said like 15 minutes. And I put on my calendar like, a whole hour or two because, man, we were chatting it up. And I got a chance to really get to know my members and get to know, like, what they needed and get to know, like, why they said yes. And even though I'm still struggling a little bit with the whole what is this offering? I'm learning every single time I write a sales email, I'm learning right now, as I'm literally in the midst of publicly launching this membership, what is this off? Like, what is this actually offering? And now that I have my testimonials and now that I have reasonings as to why people are saying. People are saying, yes, I need this, the reason why people are sharing this, the reason why people are kind of being my superheroes, in a sense, and just backing. Backing this up, even if it's not for them, it's really nice to know that once you have one person that's not your mom, when you have one person that's actually using this, you know that this is something that's growable and scalable. And watching you, Liz, makes me think that, makes me believe that this is worth it. And also with other people in my corner, you know, Zack Spuckler, who is helping me with figuring out Facebook ads, and even Amy on your team, learning about copywriting and. And gaining clarity. I think that's another thing that's going to help, too, is that when you're doing this, you're going to gain clarity, and when you're doing this, you're going to get rid of that friction of crap. I literally am going to be emailing my email list every single day and then ramping up emails throughout the week. You know, and as scary as that sounds, I did it before. That means that I can do it again. And if they are Quote, unquote, bombarded with emails. They can either unsubscribe and come back. They know where to find me, or they weren't my target audience in general. And you can just use that as like a, hey, I know there's a lot of emails come in just because, you know, if you want me to not talk about this thing or if it's not pertinent to you, click here. And, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, pause. You pause it for a minute. So that's, those are like the things that I'm learning through these, through launching. This would be the second, I guess, official launch of Brown Sugar Graphics with an actual name, an actual sales page. So it's been really, really helpful being able to do this launch and actually have a lot more clarity. And I think this is like, it's like overarching looking in. But yeah, these are all of my takeaways. There's so much, so much that I'm learning just through crafting sales emails.
- [13:26]
A
I freaking love that you said that. There is so much I'm learning just from crafting sales emails. It's so true. It's so true. You've got to sell to learn what it takes to sell. All right, Melquia, if people want to get on your email list, get your goodness, get your illustrations, join your membership, et cetera, etc, how can people join your email list?
- [13:52]
B
You can get on my email list by going on my website@pretty Kittypaintings.com and there's going to be a little button in the header that says surprise. And you click that button and that's where you get. I'm gonna spoil a surprise here. Three free illustrations that you can use on pretty much anything that you're working on for personal use. And that'll be really fun for you to use. Thank you so much, Liz. And thank you so much, my dear listener, for tuning in to Sales Email Summit. You're gonna do great. I'm so proud of each and every one of you for just showing up today.
- [14:38]
A
Is Melquia not the perfect cheerleader? I love her so much. So Melquia has been a part of my email marketing membership for at least a year, if not two years now. And, you know, when she was first starting, she was like, I don't know what, you know, I email for my jobby job, but I don't really email for me. You know, I'm an illustrator. How can I email for me? But guess what? She showed up every single week, used the templates showed up to the live Q&As once a month and now she has a membership. She's making founding member sales and I just could not have done this sales email summit without her. So go ahead and sign up for her list if you need clip art and also if you just want to see her pretty kitty drawings because she's one of the most talented, underrated artists of our time, I'm not afraid to say that. Now let's steal her email. First of all, I'm stealing the subject line immediately. I'm definitely using that in my next newsletter and want to steal this sales email as well. So you already know I'm getting the Steal these Sales Emails template pack. It's just $35 is a total steal. Get it. Remember, this is a plug and play collection of every single email you've heard in the summit, okay? Including this one. I have rewritten these into simple, simple templates you can customize in minutes. Now remember, I was talking about my membership. This is not a plug for the membership, but Melquia was able to get things going in her business and her email marketing and her email list because she's part of the membership where I send out templates. So you. The point is, you already know these templates are going to be good, because that is what I'm good at. No decoding, no guesswork. Just copy the template, tweak it for your business, and hit send to your email list so you can make either your first sales like Malquia or your subsequent sales like the other online business owners in this summit. $35. Get the template pack link in the show notes.